Display and lighting systems based on light emitting diodes (“LEDs”) have a variety of applications. Such display and lighting systems are designed by arranging a plurality of photo-electronic elements (“elements”) such as rows of individual LEDs. LEDs that are based upon semiconductor technology have traditionally used inorganic materials, but recently, the organic LED (“OLED”) has become a potential substitute. Examples of other elements/devices using organic materials include organic solar cells, organic transistors, organic detectors, and organic lasers.
An OLED typically comprises two or more thin organic layers (e.g., an electrically conducting organic layer and an emissive organic layer which emits light) which separate an anode and a cathode layer. Under an applied forward potential, the anode injects holes into the stack of organic layers, while the cathode injects electrons. The injected holes and electrons each migrate (under the influence of an externally applied electric field) toward the opposite electrode and recombine in the emissive layer under emission of a photon. Similar device structure and device operation applies for OLEDs consisting of small molecule organic layers and/or polymeric organic layers. Each of the OLEDs can be a pixel element in a passive/active matrix OLED display or a single element used as a general area light source or lighting element and the like.
The construction of OLED light sources and OLED displays from individual OLED elements or devices is well known in the art. The displays and light sources may have one or more common layers such as common substrates, anodes or cathodes and one or more common organic layers sandwiched in between. They may also consist of photo-resist or electrical separators, bus lines, charge transport and/or charge injection layers, and the like. Typically, a transparent or semi-transparent glass substrate is used in bottom-emitting OLED devices.
The mismatch of the refractive index between air and the OLED may lead to a significant part of the generated light being lost through total internal reflection into wave guiding modes and self absorption. Applying a phosphor layer or a scattering layer on the light emitting side of an OLED-device increases the output of OLEDs due to volumetric scattering mechanisms. Light extraction can also be improved by texturing the light emitting side of an OLED, for example by sand blasting or etching as described in a currently co-pending commonly assigned US patent application entitled “Using Prismatic Microstructured Films for Image Blending in OLEDs” filed on Aug. 29, 2005, bearing Ser. No. 11/215,548.
Furthermore, the quality of lighting is given by the color rendering index (CRI) of the light source. The CRI is a measurement of the light source (lighting device) to render all the colors of the object under illumination. The CRI depends on the normalized output spectrum of a lighting device. For many applications, light sources, which emit light in the short wave range, are coated with one or more layers of luminescence converting materials (down-conversion layers), i.e. color-changing materials, to form a higher-CRI light source compared to the uncoated light source.
A color-changing material coated on a light source absorbs a part of photons emitted by the light source and emits them at a different wavelength. A color-changing material is defined herein as a material which absorbs photons related to lower wavelength(s) and which remits all of them or a part of them (depending on the quantum yield of the color-changing material) at higher wavelength(s). The non-absorbed fraction of the photons emitted by the light source and the photons emitted by the color-changing material constitute the output spectrum of the coated device.
For lighting applications, cerium doped garnets, nitride phosphors, ionic phosphors like SrGa2S4:Eu2+ or SrS:Eu2+, fluorescent dyes, quantum dots or conjugated polymers are often used as luminescence converting materials. In most applications, these materials are dissolved or embedded in a transparent matrix, for example polycarbonate, silicone, epoxy or PMMA (polymethylmethacrylate). The matrix containing the color-changing material is often directly coated on the light source or used as material of the device housing.
The disadvantage of conventional uniform coatings is explained by the following example. For instance, consider one or more uniform down-conversion layers on top of a flat light source. The light output of the light source is below the photon saturation limit of the down-conversion layer(s). In this case the shape of the output spectrum of the device is only adjusted by the thickness value(s) of the layer(s) and the concentration(s) of the phosphor(s) in the matrix. The multitude of all possible output spectra is given by the variation of these concentrations or thickness values. Thus, there is limited flexibility in designing output spectra.